Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
“I do not.”
His words were adamant, but I couldn’t help but shake my head. “You do…did.”
He looked so confused that I almost stopped and reevaluated if this was the right time and place to do this, but I couldn’t do this. It was seriously messing with my head to have him here.
My stupid heart was starting to feel that maybe he was there to stay…so if he wasn’t, I needed to know.
“I was…I’m all in.”
“You’re all in.”
“All in,” he confirmed.
“What changed?” I asked, staring at him.
“Nearly losing you.”
I laughed. “You could’ve lost me at any time. That’s a stupid reason.”
His eyes changed as he took a seat and stared at me across his bed.
“I can’t ever make it up to you,” he murmured gruffly. “I can only go on from here. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. My mom was in pain. Hell, I was in pain. I couldn’t believe my sister had to go through that. Then, once I did it…I couldn’t make myself move past it.”
I laughed humorlessly.
"You think you're the only one in pain, Reed?" I asked in a suspiciously calm voice. "Newsflash! You weren't!"
I was blaming my irrationality on the drugs that they were pumping into my system…or maybe my freakin’ hormones were still whacked.
Whatever.
I didn’t care.
My belly tightened as a sob hitched my throat, causing a shaft of pain to pour through me. Bile rose in my throat. I wanted to puke everywhere. But I knew I couldn't. This needed to be said, and if I started throwing up everywhere, he'd get all concerned. Then I wouldn't be able to get anything out of him because he was a freakin mother hen when it came to me. He always had been.
Which hurt even worse. He loved me. I loved him. But he refused to have anything to do with me because he thought it was the right thing to do. Or at least…he had been. Now, I didn’t even know.
However, half his argument when we were younger had to do with my parents and how much he disliked them, and they disliked him.
Well, they weren't in the picture anymore, now were they?
"What are you talking about, Kris?"
He looked utterly confused. Heartbroken.
"I introduced Jay to Amy," I said so softly that nobody would hear but him. "It was at a volleyball game. I don’t even know why she was there…Jay was there to watch me because my father dragged him along.” I looked away from his piercing stare. “I wish I’d never done it.”
He didn't reply.
I was about to tell him my most secret shame.
"And then I found out what he did," I whispered. "You know when someone is trying to get you to see how it would feel, and they say, 'Well, what would you think if it was your own sister?'"
He didn't nod. Didn't so much as twitch.
"Before he found your sister?" I choked out. "Yeah, he was doing some of that to me."
His eyes closed.
"You don't think I know what Amy was going through?” He swallowed, looking like I’d just punched him in the gut. I watched his Adam's apple bob with the movement. "It was me he used to victimize. Now I’m paying for my sins. For never telling a cop what he did to me."
Reed was taken from me. My babies were almost taken from me. My life was only hours away from slipping away. What was next?
"No."
Reed’s one word sounded like it was ripped straight out of his gut.
I smiled, but it wasn't in humor. It was in self-defamation.
"I was happy."
His eyes flashed.
"When he stopped, it was because he had someone new to do that to. Your sister.”
"What did he do?"
I could tell it pained him to ask. He didn't want to know. If he knew, then he couldn't deny it anymore.
"Everything but the one thing you’re thinking of."
Reed made a sound in his throat that sounded like he'd been stabbed in the heart.
I didn't waver.
"My mom knew he came into my bedroom because I told her," I whispered. "She knew that Jay liked to t-touch me."
"Did he rape you?"
Blunt. To the point.
It was killing him. He needed to know, but he didn't want to know at the same time.
He wanted to remain blissfully in the dark. But hell, didn't we all? Nobody wanted to know that bad shit happened to the people they loved.
And I knew Reed loved me. It was in his eyes. The same love that was in my own.
"He never got that in depth," I whispered. “It started a while before we met. Stopped when Jay started spending so much time at your house.”
I knew why he stopped…now. Then, I hadn’t. I’d just been happy that he had.
But Reed had never known, and now I could see the self-condemnation as he tried to come to terms with not being able to save me from it. Eventually, I would've worked up the courage to tell him, but even now, I hadn’t wanted to say the words.